New Player Quickstart Guide

Understanding Your Character Sheet

Your character sheet has a lot of info on it and it’s more complicated than it looks. You have your name, strain info, stats, and skills. There’s also other things like faith, societies, and diseases, but we’ll focus on the more crucial things first.

Strain determines some parts of your costuming and roleplay behaviors so be sure to read through the descriptions to make sure you’re representing your strain accurately as best you can. Each of the 24 strains is distinct, but is loosely related thematically to 2 others. These groups of 3 strains are called a Lineage and share a common theme. For example, the Nomad Lineage is known to travel around and includes Diesel Jocks, Rovers, and Saltwise.

Your character’s stats include Body, Mind, Resolve, and Infection. Body is how much damage your character can take before hitting Bleedout. Mind is expended to use Development skills. Resolve is another resource but usually for big, impactful effects. Infection is how many “lives” your character has. Each death removes 1 infection unless it’s protected by one of a few mechanics.

During events, Body and Mind can be restored through several mechanics. Between events, Body, Mind, and Resolve are restored to their full values. Infection is not, but there are means to raise your Infection count.

Skills are not as simple as the stuff before, but they are necessary to understand. There’s 3 types of skills: Default, Impact, and Development. Default skills are things everyone has and can do. This includes all the weapon skills and Basic Wasteland Lore. This means everyone can use any type of weapon to some degree and with Basic Wasteland Lore, everyone has some understanding of the world around them.

Next are Impact skills. These are skills that are more active and dynamic than Development skills. They’re mostly, but not all combat skills. You purchase uses of each one you want and can use the skills until you run out of uses. You get the uses back after 20 minutes of not using any Impact skills or engaging in combat.

Development skills are the non-combat skills, such as building things, healing people, or delving into research. These cost Mind or Resolve and take some time to perform. Development skills have 3 levels to them: Basic, Proficient, and Master. These must be learned in order and each level gives you more capabilities.